Without knowing about it, AdViking has been writing about the potential use for QR for a couple of years now and while walking to the train station this morning, AdViking was reminded of the need for real world applicable use of QR technology.

The reason being that while walking past what looked like an interesting wine cellar and and while writing this, under 15 minutes later, the name and website URL is gone from memory.

The QR wish is why can’t one do a quick scan of a QR code and automatically the wine cellar is stored into my preferred QR suppliers (e.g.: Live, Delicious, FB, etc). or better a QR server that through OpenID and with correct permissions talks to all of my webtop points of contact.

So, the gold rush is starting. That is, there is full realisation that (depending on whose numbers you read) there is about 1 billion people with PCs and 3 billion with mobile phones and as the handsets mature for a richer media experience, then you’re quids in if you’re acting now.

The big issue is lack of standards and multiple entry points to book the ads. I believe it was someone from WPP that talked about having to book ads with 6 different players in the UK to get any decent coverage.

To me, this spells a big opportunity and the race must be on to solve this issue. That is if someone can provide the interface with the appropriate tracking analytics over top of the various mobile advertising distribution points then they are one to a winner.

That is, something like Atlas which agencies are all ready familiar with is extended to provide mobile campaign capabilities then you’re laughing.

Ad Types and Formats

I asked a lot of people for their thoughts on this and the two primary use cases that everyone agreed on was:

1. Hyper Local – I’m here and need it now kind of search. This is where Location becomes of ultimate importance. This is a natural extension for IYPs, so an easy way to get coverage is to not bother building up an advertiser base but instead cut a deal with an IYP. This can also extend to various things like price comparison and Recs.

Formats could be various but I would lean to short texts ads linking to business pages that include some sort easy mapping access.

2. Killing Time – I’m on a bus, waiting for a meeting to start, etc. and want to kill some time. This is naturally the home of bigger brands and the like.

Some formats that I believe would work for this are pre and post video rolls, display and in-game/on-world.

Advertising – Lack of QR Bummer

One of the ad types and formats I’ve been tracking for a few years is those based around QR. I was hoping to find at least a few companies involved in this at the MWC but didn’t have any luck. The positive was that in my discussions most people also believe that QR is going to be big, in particular it’s going to be a great union with Outdoor (outside of Digital the only other growth area). In fact, some Telstra people confirmed they are actively working with this technology through their Mobile division.

If you haven’t been to MWC and you’re part of the advertising industry, you should plan to go next year. It’s invaluable spending some focused time looking at what’s likely to be an incredible growth area over the next couple of years.

One complaint is that the conference is too big and unwieldy now with lots of things that don’t cross over, it would be better to theme the pavilions better so more along the lines of:

Front Office

Back Office

Infrastructure

Consumer

So if you do go, it’s probably better to take some time ahead to plan your strategy to get the most out of it, but then again, most of experience is just meeting and talking to many people about what you’re seeing/they are seeing. And of course it being in Barcelona rocks.